Machinations Behind an Award-Winning Press – Octane Press's Story

John Deere Evolution is the latest award-winning book from Lee Klancher, writer and founder of Octane Press, a press dedicated to telling the stories of automobiles, motorcycles and machines.

At IBPA’s 34th Benjamin Franklin Awards this year, John Deere Evolution won Gold in two categories: History, and Cover Design (Large Format). It is a sweet reward indeed for publisher and author Lee Klancher of Octane Press, who spent 10 years and, literally, endured heat, rain, snowstorms, and fire ants to get it published.

Here, Lee shares with us two stories. First, the 10-year story of how he got John Deere Evolution to print. And then the story of how a small company founded on an obsession with engines came to have more than 50 authors and 200 books.

IBPA: Lee, first of all, congrats on John Deere Evolution winning two Golds at the Benjamin Franklin Awards. Though not all of us are tractor fans, nonetheless, everyone can appreciate a beautifully photographed and well researched book. How did the book come into being?

Lee Klancher: Thank you! It’s an honor and a joy to have this book selected. The original concept was to blend studio photography that would showcase the lines of key John Deere machines, with text that traced the storied history of Deere’s machine design, which was done by famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss.

I felt such a book was both an important historical piece, and something that would be popular with enthusiasts for equipment history, as well as people interested in vehicle design. The final product, however, is much more than just that…

IBPA: So the project got expanded?

At a photo shoot for the book.

Lee: The first batch of images were made in 2011 when I worked with tractor collector Bruce Keller to build a huge photographic studio big enough to make images of tractors from his collection of nearly 800 machines. By the way, he owns the world’s largest John Deere collection. The studio was 40-feet long, 25-feet deep, with 24-feet high walls! It was massive.

We had a crew of 10 working for a week to make images. The images were fantastic, but the selection of only a few key models was a miss in my opinion. I decided the book needed to be a complete catalog and include all the John Deere models.

It took nearly a decade of work to gather images of all the machines. I built another even larger studio in an abandoned aircraft hangar to photograph them and made hundreds more photographs of Deere machines around the country.

I also came to believe that just new imagery lacked depth, so I started digging for design sketches, mock-ups, and period photography. I found tremendous material in archives. The two standouts were the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian, which holds the Henry Dreyfuss Agency archives, and the archives at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

In the end, the work uses appearance as a lens, but the book provides deep insight into how the machines were engineered and built.

IBPA: Photographing these massive machines must have posed some logistical challenges.

Lee: Oh my. This book had it all when it comes to challenges! I was on the road for several months, and the Deere trips always had drama. I blew several tires, had an engine fail, and got stuck in snow and mud.

The weather was equally challenging – 100-degree heat in Illinois gave me heat stroke; fire ants in Texas bit me more than 100 times. Torrential rain in Missouri forced me to shoot at midnight in an abandoned warehouse. I hit two sub-zero snowstorms. The second snowstorm froze my camper solid in Wisconsin and stranded me in a campground for three days due to high winds and icy roads. The wind died just enough for me to drive, carefully, to Arkansas and thaw out, but I had to cancel two weeks of shooting!

IBPA: Tell us how you built the photo studios to accommodate the tractors.

Lee: Building the two custom photo studios was a huge challenge. The white backdrops in the first took several days -- and all my cash – to get right. Tractors refused to start. Their tires left giant rubber marks on the white concrete and we had to re-paint the floor every night. A wheel fell off one of the tractors while it was driving to the studio.

The second studio was an aircraft hangar. Hanging the light bank required an 80-foot boom truck to fasten the pulley to the roof. A freak late-night windstorm blew through a crack in the door and wiped out our entire backdrop. We showed up in the morning and it looked like a bomb had went off, with stands and black curtains strewn all over. We shot the rest of the machines using the hangar as a backdrop, which turned out fabulously.

IBPA: We heard that, in the process, you helped preserve John Deere history at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Lee: While doing research at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian, the archivist offhandedly mentioned she had a dozen or more boxes of material from the Henry Dreyfuss Agency that had never been cataloged. I came back on another trip and helped sort and label all of that. It was a gold mine of fantastic drawings, photographs, and design materials.

Chuck Pelly is a well-known industrial designer who worked for John Deere early in his career. Literally a few days before we were scheduled to go on press, Chuck called to let me know he found a file folder of sketches and film. He shipped them overnight, we delayed the publication to get those in, and they are fantastic additions.

Lee, on the road in 1986.

IBPA: Now let’s change gears so to speak and talk about Octane Press. You have said that Octane Press would make books for machine enthusiasts. Where does that love for machine come from?

Lee: I think it all started with Beverly Cleary. I loved her book Runaway Ralph when I was very small—maybe 5 or 6 years old. I was (and am) a rabid reader, and I read that book multiple times. I tormented my Dad—who is not a gearhead—to get a motorcycle. My uncle sold Dad a beat-up Honda for $25 when I was 11. I was immediately hooked.

I was hard on equipment and the bikes were old, so they broke and I had to learn how to fix them. That taught me an appreciation for mechanical things and working with my hands.

I also took up motorcycle racing, which I loved, and I raced on road courses, off-road, on dragstrips, and on dirt ovals at fairgrounds. All that said, I studied engineering and science journalism in college. My gearhead leanings were intended to be recreational not a career path.

My passion and education melded just after I graduated from college when a book publisher, attracted by my magazine work, hired me to write a book. They hired me on as an editor a few years later.  

IBPA: Why did you feel compelled to start Octane Press? Aren’t there magazines and books that serve these enthusiasts…how were you going to be different?

Lee: The niche itself made sense for me as I had worked in it for more than a decade. I was an acquisitions editor at a gearhead-oriented book publisher, and also a very active freelance writer and photographer for motorcycle magazines.

Being an acquisition editor requires you to do profit and loss statements for books and understand how book economics work. And being a freelance contributor requires you to be really aggressive—kind of a mercenary really—and make things happen for yourself. The combination gave me the tools I needed to build a business.

I always had an interest in my own publishing company and, in 2008, I started publishing my own stuff. I started with $500 and a lot of horse-trading for help. The first book was my own work, but the other titles for the next five years came from other authors. I didn’t take any pay in those early years—I paid the bills by freelancing and invested every nickel Octane Press made into growing the company.

Publisher Lee Klancher, Editor Faith Garcia, book character Alexander Botts, and Marketing Director Catherine Mandel of Octane Press working a show in 2021.

We had some nice hits right out of the gate. Our second book, Taxi Confidential, was featured in the New York Times and had a nice run of sales in New York bookstores. A year later, a compilation of essays by well-known automotive editor Leon Mandel was featured in a New York Times holiday gift guide. I spent that Christmas packing books in my garage. I contracted a warehouse shortly after.

In 2013, I authored and published a large coffee table book that was a deep dive into how modern tractors were made. We did it as an anniversary project for Case IH, and we did everything first class. That book was a huge risk—we literally spent everything we had making the book—and thankfully it was a hit. To date, we’ve sold more than 100,000 copies of that book in more than a half-dozen different editions.

When that book came, we were able to hire more staff, move to an office, and I started taking a paycheck!

IBPA: Finally, what’s your next dream project? Can we assume it’s going to involve machines?

Lee: My next book is a project that uses tractors to help kids learn about math and science. I collaborated with writer Katie Free, a fantastic children’s science writer, who tells the story of tractor technology through the eyes of kids. I wrote a bit, but mostly contributed photos and research. Sales wunderkind Janine Jensen at Chesapeake & Hudson quipped that the book could start a new trend in children’s books. She said, “Tractors are the new dinosaurs.” I love that!

Share your publishing news with the IBPA community! Send news about events or accomplishments to adeline@ibpa-online.org. For more details about the types of stories we're seeking, click here.

Keep in mind that we reserve Spotlights for major news (such as, you published a book about space exploration and now it's being read in a live video feed by astronauts from the International Space Station), unique news (such as, you published a book about cycling and now the author is riding a bike across the U.S. for their book tour), or human interest stories (such as, you visit shelters every weekend to read books to the dogs and cats there).

Though launching a new book isn’t the focus of our Spotlights articles, IBPA is happy to share that exciting news on our IBPA Instagram page. Please contact adeline@ibpa-online.org with the launch date, your book cover, your book title, your book's genre, a link to where readers can learn more about your book, and your Instagram handle (and the Instagram handle of the author).

For good news in general about your publishing company (your book received a wonderful editorial review, you have an upcoming speaking engagement, etc.), use the hashtag #IBPAmemberGoodNews on Twitter and IBPA will amplify your good news!

Whether you have news or not, all of us at IBPA are cheering you on!

About the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

Founded in 1983 to support independent publishers nationwide, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) leads and serves the independent publishing community through advocacy, education, and tools for success. With over 4,000 members, IBPA is the largest publishing association in the U.S. Its vision is a world where every independent publisher has the access, knowledge, and tools needed to professionally engage in all aspects of an inclusive publishing industry. For more information, visit ibpa-online.org.